For most of human history, most people’s everyday lives were pretty much the same

[raccoon]

as the everyday lives of their parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents.

Nowadays everyday life for average people changes with dizzying speed. For the past few centuries it has, and it keeps getting faster.

Ever think about what this might be doing to us?

Anybody know of any books/articles (other than FUTURE SHOCK) that deal with this?

[Soylent Brice]

1. three books i recommend, (frequently)

The Age of Intelligent Machines

The Age of Spiritual Machines

The Singularity is Near



welcome to the dawn of the Singularity. it's only going to get faster from here.

[Mari333]

2. thanks for the list I like the idea of a zero point paradigm

:)

[Soylent Brice]

4. six epochs:

[Mari333]

7. enormous changes since I was born in information gathering

watched it with awe.
Im almost 60, wonder what my 2 yr old grandson will see...

nonetheless, I sat with him in the woods the other day for 3 hours watching ants walk in and out of their anthills. there is something to be said for slowing down and smelling the flowers, too.

[Soylent Brice]

8. very true.

[Cresent City Kid]

3. Have you read "The Third Wave"?

It's by Future Shock author Alvin Toffler (I'm guessing on the spelling) written in '79 or '80. The three waves as he calls them are the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, the industrial revolution, and the post-industrial period which he says started as the industrial revolution peaked in the '50's, what we call globalization today. In a quaint way, he predicts the internet, underestimating it, and he predicts social change that I would say the speed of which he overestimates. I guess he was surprised by how far backwards we would go in the 80's. He was more accurate on how multi-national corporations would transcend the power of the nation state. As far as the effect of change on the individual, his solution is awareness and adaptation. He sees the changes as inevitable, and the discord caused by the powerful from the second wave trying to hang on to the old ways.

[havocmom]

5. Thanks. Putting that in the cart

[The2ndWheel]

6. The Ascent of Humanity

http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter1-1.php

"For at least 200 years now, futurists have been predicting the imminent rise of a technological utopia, drawing on the premise that technology will free humankind from labor, suffering, disease, and possibly even death. Underlying this view is a defining story of our civilization: that science has brought us from a state of ignorance to an increasing understanding of the physical universe, and that technology has brought us from a state of dependency on nature's whims to an increasing mastery of the material world. Someday in the future, goes the story, our understanding and control will be complete.

At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, it seemed obvious that the Age of Coal would usher in a new era of leisure. In one industry after another, a machine was able to "do the work of a thousand men". Soon the day would come when all work was mechanized: if a machine could do the work of a thousand men, then it stood to reason that each man would have only to work one-thousandth as hard.

As the Industrial Revolution progressed it soon became apparent that most people were doing more work, not less. True, the spinning jenny and power loom freed millions of women from the tedium of spinning their own thread and weaving their own cloth, but replaced that tedium with the horrors of the textile mill. Similarly, the steel foundry replaced the blacksmith's shop, the railroad car replaced the horse and cart, the steam shovel replaced the pick and spade. Yet in terms of working hours, working conditions, danger and monotony, the Industrial Revolution had not lived up to the promise encoded in the term "labor-saving device". The Age of Leisure, where coal-powered machines would do the work while people looked on and reaped the benefits, was going to arrive later than expected."

[havocmom]

9. As the gap between rich and the rest widens, access to technology will too

The uber rich get the new toys. The rest of us seem to be devolving into less than slaves.

Been shouting for decades that what was being done to the US was turning it into a Third World Nation. Nations now mean nothing, all is corporation rule. Those at the top get to live beyond our wildest imaginings and the world is spoiled in the process.

Think about the difference between resources of the military industrial complex and the resources of starving peoples around the world. One group has endlessly evolving high tech, one group has death without adequate water and food. More and more of the world (and the US too) is falling into the latter group. Might as well be two species. Probably will be soon enough.

Utopia was a lovely prayer deflected by the worst aspects of human nature.